When I was in Japan in the early '90s I saw an american film on TV there. It started off as a fairly standard "Lets send the Special Forces Guy with some sort of amnesia and the Computer Nerd into Afghanistan to recover the crashed Russian Super Plane film." They go through Afghanistan having fairly typical Buddy-Buddy Action film adventures until the last 15 min or so of the film where it takes a sudden turn into La-La Land.

They reach this monesary and are escorted into the catacombes beneath the monestary by this priestess who apparently knows the Special Forces guy. They are shown this glowing ball thingie by the apparently psychic priestess and the Computer Nerd immediately leaps to the obvious conclusion.

(Not exact as it's 12-14 year old memories, but it went something like this)

"My God! That has to the the Deep Space Probe we lost last year. Obviously it fell through a black hole, traveled back in time and witnessed the whole of human history! Making it the Ultimate Weapon!"

Then the Russian Spetnzats troopers show up and the glowing ball thingie/ultimate weapon is made to self destruct so they can't capture it.

When I was in Japan in the early '90s I saw an american film on TV there. It started off as a fairly standard "Lets send the Special Forces Guy with some sort of amnesia and the Computer Nerd into Afghanistan to recover the crashed Russian Super Plane film." They go through Afghanistan having fairly typical Buddy-Buddy Action film adventures until the last 15 min or so of the film where it takes a sudden turn into La-La Land.

They reach this monesary and are escorted into the catacombes beneath the monestary by this priestess who apparently knows the Special Forces guy. They are shown this glowing ball thingie by the apparently psychic priestess and the Computer Nerd immediately leaps to the obvious conclusion.

(Not exact as it's 12-14 year old memories, but it went something like this)

"My God! That has to the the Deep Space Probe we lost last year. Obviously it fell through a black hole, traveled back in time and witnessed the whole of human history! Making it the Ultimate Weapon!"

Then the Russian Spetnzats troopers show up and the glowing ball thingie/ultimate weapon is made to self destruct so they can't capture it.

They didn't have any especially distinguishing features I'm afraid. The Computer nerd was, well moderately nerdish (pretty sure he wore glasses) and the Special Forces guy with amnesia was moderately buff and athletic looking. The plot up until the space probe scene was fairly pedestrian and I really don't remember any details about it other than they were initially sent in to recover wreckage from a crashed russian jet. It was implied from the plot that there was something about the space probe/glowing ball that caused the plane to crash.

I'm pretty sure if anyone can identify it, it's going to be because they recognize that scene with the space probe. It just came so completely out of left field and was such a totally non-obvious conclusion to reach.

I will check it out. It's entirely possible that I was wrong about some of the details and it does sound like it could fit. The two actors are plausible fits for my vague memories of what the characters looked like.

Unfortunately "Heroes Stand Alone" is definitely not it. No glowing ball, no priestesses, no "ultimate weapons". From the little I've watched it's basically your standard "Rambo Pt.II"-ish plot, ie. guys sent on a mission to fail while being stabbed in the back by a treacherous superior.

Though intriguingly, the main russian baddie does once reference "He did this once to me in Afghanistan" at one point. But the Chad Everet wasn't in any previous movies that might fit.

Unfortunately "Heroes Stand Alone" is definitely not it. No glowing ball, no priestesses, no "ultimate weapons". From the little I've watched it's basically your standard "Rambo Pt.II"-ish plot, ie. guys sent on a mission to fail while being stabbed in the back by a treacherous superior.

Though intriguingly, the main russian baddie does once reference "He did this once to me in Afghanistan" at one point. But the Chad Everet wasn't in any previous movies that might fit.

From one of my reference books, "Curse of the Crystal Eye" is described as a adventure film with lots of horses and extras, set in the desert and caverns. It also mentions the one character falling in love with the ambassador's daughter, and that it is a Corman film.

You probably already checked them, but just in case, here are the external reviews for "Curse of the Crystal Eye":

"Treasure of the Four Crowns" is definitely not it. I saw it many years ago and remember mocking it quite a lot for the cheezy "Stuff flying at you" that happens so often. The Buddy-Buddy film didn't have anything like that sort of stuff.